Posted by Jerry on December 10th, 2004 — Posted in Journal, Music, Travel
The tour was awesome! I’ll have some more photos up soon – suffice to say the trip was exhausting and exhilarating. Beijing is a vibrant place with many surprises. We played five shows over a week and had a few days at either end to do some sightseeing and shopping.
The weather was cool – similar to Canberra winter temperatures. The language was completely alien to us although by the end we had learnt some useful phrases – like the greeting: Ni Haou, yes, no, and No Way! But there were always enough people around who spoke English for us to be able to get around without problems.
The traffic is truly chaotic! Pedestrian crossings exist only to concentrate the targets, red lights are treated as ‘advisory only’ and they somehow manage to fit six lanes of traffic into four lanes of road! but for all the chaos we were soon crossing roads with care, and trusting to the skills of the taxi drivers. On the taxis – look for ones with low numbers on the side – they have been licensed for longer and are more likely to know their way to your destination.
The shows: The John Bull Pub was fun – I think they expected us to sit quietly in a corner and play wallpaper muzak – instead after about half an hour we looked at each other and said ‘nah – time to show our stuff’ so we launched ourselves at individual tables and played requests and did silly antics – and the crowd loved it – soon we had them singing along and a great night was had by all!
The Bookworm is like a Parisienne salon of thirty years ago – the place is lined with books – it doubles as a lending library for expats – the place serves excellent food and drinks and offers a wonderful respite from shopping at the Yashow market.
The first time we played there it was a jam with some local celtic musicians – including an expert gallic linguist who sang some wonderful songs. We also met the piper who had been flown out from Scotland to participate in the St Andrews Ball – the highlight of our tour. Make sure you get good directions though – I wound up walking around a dilapidated hutong, or dingy residential back alley way for about 30 minutes before I stumbled on the place… scary!
St Andrews Ball at the Great Wall Sheraton – a formal Highland Ball with piper and Full Circle playing scottish music for the dancers – we played until 0530AM – a full 12 hours from sound check to pack-up! Exhausting but fun:-) This is the first year they had brought out a band and I don’t think it will be the last! We were able to tailor the pace and the start-finish of the dances to suit the dancers – something a CD can never provide. We made many friends that night and I hope we get to do it again next year!
Sights included the Great Wall – a truly amazing structure! We also visited the Lama monastery, The Ming Tombs, the Forbidden City (need to spend at least two days there!) and the ancient observatory – one of the overlooked gems of Beijing!
We saw an acrobatic show at the Chowyang Theatre – truly amazing performers
Beijing is certainly a place to visit again before the Olympics!
cheers
Jerry
Comments Off on Return from Beijing Tour
Posted by Jerry on November 23rd, 2004 — Posted in Journal, Travel
After scanning the Moleskine page for the Wandering Moleskine Project I posted the moleskinskine No 8 to the next recipient. Then a final pack and we’re off on the first stage of our trip to Beijing – and Singapore has free internet terminals in the airport! Must dash 🙂
Cheers
Jerry
Comments Off on Australia to Singapore
Posted by Jerry on August 27th, 2004 — Posted in Technology, Travel, Writing
I would venture to say that anyone who has travelled with a computer has given thought at some point to how to do it without carting around the ubiquitous briefcase-sized anvil. But I wonder how many have actually managed it? A recent series of articles recounts how an enterprising journalist sold his laptop on ebay and decided to use the proceeds to come up with a pocket solution that would cover the basic functions of an office on the move.
I found it interesting that the journalist had to restrict the technology to that of a couple of years ago, because some functions have disappeared, despite the much trumpeted convergence of technologies, and the so-called wireless revolution.
My needs are different from those presented in that series of articles, but only a little. And my version also fits in a series of pockets – though not the fishing vest the author advocates.
So here is my version of the laptop-less traveller. First my travel needs: I want to write stuff on a comfortable keyboard. I want to keep my expenses straight, and I want to keep appointments scheduled. I want to be able to send and accept notes to a fellow traveller’s palm-top. I want to be able to build and display web pages. I want to be able to scan text and to take photographs – and integrate the photos with the web pages. I want a common, compatible, storage medium that goes across all devices. I want to be able to print stuff. And I want to be able to use the internet. Above all I want battery power to last from Canberra to London, or to last for several days in places where mains power is at best intermittent – even if it is available.
My other condition is that I can’t afford to buy laptop, so my entire technology suite should fall within the price range of a base-level laptop.
Here’s how I did it. The centrepiece is the PDA. I don’t want to learn how to write all over again, so I immediately ruled out almost all of what is available today – yes you can buy separate keyboards, but they have extra hinges to break, sockets to get dusty, and above all, a portrait screen that doesn’t let you lay out written text very well. My choice was rapidly narrowed to a couple of machines that had integral keyboards – and some of those were more like calculator pads rather than keys, or required one to have fingers the size of a gnat. Some even required that you typed only with two thumbs. Some might say my typing may as well be with two thumbs! But I found the one I needed – a Psion 5MX – not made now for four years, and still streets ahead on practicality over most other PDAs.
There are some limitations – no WiFi connection, no USB ports (although you can use serial-USB connectors), the thing won’t (yet) play movies, and there is no colour screen. so why on earth would I persevere with such dated technology? Even the EPOC operating system is no longer supported (although some EPOC-6 programs will run on EPOC-5). And I have yet to be able to convert Psion Presentation documents to powerPoint (the mac doesn’t speak PsiWin – and it is one of the very few things left out of Neuon converter).
Here is why. The keyboard is still the best that has ever been on the market for such devices. It is small, but with keys large enough and well enough spaced to type quite comfortably – and even on the smallest aircraft you have room to spare on the tray for a coffee while you type. It also weighs only 350g including batteries Psion made some good choices for connectivity. Storage is on Compact Flash cards – which now go up over 1GB – more than enough for an extended trip. You can even take backups for all your favourite applications, and a whole library of e-texts. The ‘Word’ application can be persuaded to save as RTF which is readable by most word processors. Battery life is at least two weeks of heavy usage, and the thing uses readily available AA batteries – even up-country in PNG! The Opera web browser is good, providing well laid out pages very similar to full scale computer display.
The compact flash is one major key – it also fits the cannon A40 digital camera – and you can quite happily take the flash card out of the psion, throw it in the camera, take a few hots and load it back into the psion and embed the images in a web page – which can be displayed on the psion.
Sometimes I will want to scan small bits of text, say an entry from a travel book, or my airline ticket number. for this I use a wonderful little device called a C-pen 600c scanner. Mine again is quite old, but it does the job quite well. And I can beam its contents to the psion using the IrDa infra-red port and plBeam utility.
And I have a GSM travel modem – also psion, also no longer made, but which works well on a dialup connection through which I can send emails and surf web pages. Of course this is strictly hotel room stuff because you need a fixed landline connection. Or I can wait until I get home, transfer the compact flash card to the USB card reader on my mac and upload files straight from the card.
And that’s it – so far. As for a printer, there are a couple of travel printers that take IrDa input through an infrared port and no doubt I will get one before too long – I’ll let you know what I choose when the time comes.
In the mean time, I have yet to be stopped in airport security lines with my PDA being waved through, and I generally take only the Psion and camera on board – the rest (mainly power adapters) I stow in my baggage. The psion fits in one pocket, the camera on a belt pouch and a couple of spare batteries in another pocket – oh yes the camera also takes AA size batteries I have one tenth of the hassle of those who feel the need to cart laptops on board – perhaps to play games or watch a movie. I’m happy with a chess game and a couple of others, and I have a good selection of e-books to read.
Let me know what your travel set up is!
Cheers
Jerry
Comments Off on Wearable office
Posted by Jerry on August 17th, 2004 — Posted in Journal, Travel, Writing
Now here’s a debate that has been raging all over the net – when you order more than one pint of Guinness (as one often does!) there is always that slight awkward pause – especially for a linguist like myself – as to the correct word to use. My first inclination, and the version I use probably more often than not is to refer to multiple Guinnaeii. This usually gets a reaction varying between a laugh and a raised eyebrow, preparatory to someone about to … er… offering an alternative form of the noun.
And as I think it through I would have to ask myself about the derivation of the word – clearly, if it had a Latin derivation then I might be quite close to the mark with Guinnaeii. This might even work with a Greek derivation (not sure about that). But we are not actually talking about a class of drink, which may have latin or greek roots in the phonemes. Instead, we are dealing with a brand name, a proper noun. For this reason I would probably avoid the ‘sheep’ example which would make it multiple Guinness. As a proper noun I suspect it would be like the plural of Jones – making it Joneses – and in this case I would suggest that the plural form Guinnesses would in fact be the most ‘correct’ for traditional grammarians. I suspect this one would also win on the basis of usage, although I have not taken a survey on this. Of course you can always avoid any confusion by referring to ‘pints of Guinness’.
So there you have it – and while you’re there perhaps you can make it a couple of Guinnesses for me too!
And if you are in Ireland you would naturally avoid the English language as much as possible, so you would order thusly: “Piont (leath-phiont) Guinness led’ thoil”
Cheers
Jerry
4 Comments »
Posted by Jerry on August 16th, 2004 — Posted in History, Journal, Travel
After a wonderful Sunday afternoon at Tidbinbilla, I headed into Canberra city centre and visited the National Museum of Australia – and there was a delightful exhibition of ceramics, bronze artifacts and textiles related to a recent archeological find off the coast of Brunei: The Sunken Treasures of Brunei Darussalam. The sunken vessel went down around 1600 providing a great snapshot of life and trade of that time in that area.
They say the South China Sea was the Mediterranean of the East, and this is ample demonstrated by the treasures that emerged from this wreck. It was a trading vessel – at least twice the size of anything operated by any of the European countries, showing that the Asians had sophisticated sea going vessels far superior to the Europeans. It also illustrated the kind of volume of trade between the countries of the region. There were at least three different styles of ceramic pots from different regions, and in a range of styles suggesting a wide variety of cultural contacts.
The exhibition is on now and runs until 4 October, when it will move to the Western Australian Maritime Museum – so if you are in the west, catch it there! It is well worth a look, the exhibition is well laid out and includes interactive displays, some 500 pots and several ornately cast cannon on loan from Brunei and some exquisite textile pieces. There is also a beautifully illustrated catalogue to go with it. This is definitely one of the better exhibitions to come to the NMA.
Cheers
Jerry
Comments Off on Sunken Treasures of Brunei
